Six on Saturday – 7/9/2019

The cats away and the mice have been playing. Sue gets back on Tuesday and I have a project on the go that needs to be finished and the mess tidied up before then or I’m in trouble. Most of what I’ve done in the garden proper this week is move things around, by which I don’t mean I’ve been digging things up, just playing musical chairs with pots and the detritus that accumulates in a garden shed over a decade or so.

My six, for a change, is not all plants.

One.
This was my Wednesday project. It seems longer ago and I have already become used to the new view. Sue doesn’t know about it yet, though I’d taken some lower branches off before she left. I’m wondering how long it will take her to notice. The top left picture is a year ago. There was small mishap which took out a Dahlia but on the whole I feel quite pleased with myself for getting it done without calling in the tree surgeons. 28 feet tall, roughly.

Two.
I wanted the tree done and dusted on Wednesday because my new greenhouse was arriving on Thursday. Needless to say, they didn’t say when on Thursday and it was around 4pm that it arrived. Friday morning I set about getting it up. It rained practically all day so it wasn’t a lot of fun, but good progress was made. Just vents, louvres, door, staging and glazing to go and I can start filling it up. The plan later is to get rid of the big area of decking at the back of the house and replace the paving it’s covering up with new, nicer paving; then to use the old paving to pave around this new glasshouse which is intended to replace the shed which stood where it now is and also the not pretty polytunnel up the other end of the garden, which will go up the allotment.

Three.
Talking of the allotment; it’s been a bit neglected of late, mainly I just nip up there for a bit of produce and tut about the weeds without doing anything about them. Sue having gone away in summer I’ve been trying hard to keep up with the corn, and back in the tunnel in the garden, with the tomatoes. I bought 25 ‘Albion’ Strawberries from Parkers at the beginning of the year, it’s an ever-bearing variety and this was today’s crop.

Four.
Sticking with produce, I have three apple trees in the garden. This is ‘Red Windsor’ on M9, the dwarfing rootstock used by virtually all commercial growers. I think it needs better growing conditions than it has. I get pretty good crops as you can see but there is almost no new growth; it’s the same size now as when it was planted.

Five.Hakonechloa macra ‘Sun Flare’. I picked this up a couple of years ago and for want of a space to plant it, put it in a pot. It has a yellow leaf, not striped, not quite so bright as ‘All Gold’, but it’s not so floppy as ‘All Gold’ either, which I have in the garden. Perhaps I should swap them over.

Six.Dahlia ‘Cheyenne’. One group of Dahlias in the garden came under sustained slug attack the moment they broke the soil surface this spring and in spite of all my efforts, they didn’t really get going until July. Three of them have started flowering this week, including ‘Cheyenne’, which is having to fight it’s way through Ricinus and much else.

It’s another of those weeks when I could do a six on Sunday too. Hopefully by the end of the weekend the glasshouse will be complete. I hate handling glass so the glazing is my least favourite bit. The weather is due to go down the toilet again on Monday, rain and quite windy too, so it needs to be done by then. Gotta get on. Links to the rest of the sixers at The Propagator as usual.

I’m quite breathless just reading about your tasks this week!! Very impressive. Enjoy your new greenhouse. The first thing I put in my first greenhouse was a chair because the view down our sloping garden was of the Derbyshire hills (well, one of them) so perfect on a sunny day with a cup of coffee! That’s a stunning dahlia to finish with.

All right, Jim, in your case put the chair OUTSIDE the greenhouse and look at your lovely plants! Or, even better, outside Sue’s greenhouse!? I know, you don’t have time with all your constructions and tree felling.

Canopy lifting? Bit more than that. A chainsaw was involved once I’d got it down far enough to work from the ground. Very handy knowing people who will lend me such “toys”. Dahlia ‘Karma Choc’ took a bit of a hit but it’ll be alright next year.

Well you and SedumsDahliasandHayfever have made me laugh! Very impressive job with the tree. That is surely going to have a radical effect on the garden, let alone the change in view. My strawberries – which were inherited – are in their last summer. Three years of sporadic cropping means they are on their way out. Ever bearing ones sound interesting and they look wonderful.

The weird thing about the tree is how little the impact of it going is. It was very upright and because it was almost at the northern edge of the garden cast most of its shade next door.
There are a few ever bearing strawberries about, Kings Seeds have two in their catalogue including one, Finesse, that they claim to be the best on the market. It’s hard to get independent info on these things.